ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK at TCA: Live-Blog

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK season 3 launched last month, and now the cast and creator are talking with press for a Television Critics Association panel.

Follow along for a live-blog…

4:52 PM: “We focused on the emotional aspect of each character,” Selenis Leyva says of season 3’s slight departure from the darkness.

Lea DeLaria pointed out viewers did get to see of the guards and their own world this season.

4:54 PM: “We were very pleased with that writing,” Taryn Manning says of Boo and Pennsatucky’s relationship.

“We’re really good friends as human beings…to work with Taryn, I’m having the time of my life,” DeLaria says.

4:55 PM: “I would argue there were huge stakes for Nicky Nichols this season,” Natasha Lyonne says about her season 3 arc. She can’t comment about whether she’ll return.

4:56 PM: Taylor Schilling says her version of Piper is “faaaaar” different than the real Piper — there’s a reason they have different last names.

4:57 PM: “Criminals, they tend to have more rights than victims,” Manning says. She points out that people with money can often get through the system faster than those who don’t.

5:00 PM: DeLaria says she didn’t know anything about Boo’s backstory until she read the script, and it was so similar to her it felt like it was out of her diary. “Easter used to be the biggest conundrum for me because I loved chocolate…but I knew I’d have to wear that damn dress,” DeLaria says. She notes in her real life, her parents accepted her.

5:04 PM: “I’m floored by every single one of you,” Leyva says of her co-stars. She texted Schilling after watching season 1 to praise her for the work she did.

“I think Taylor is one of the most unlazy actors,” Manning says of her co-star. (Schilling is getting emotional about the praise.)

DeLaria points to Uzo Aduba’s amazing scene when Suzanne asks why everyone calls her Crazy Eyes and Schilling’s work when the women corner Piper in the shower.

5:06 PM: Leyva shares that in season 1, she joked Gloria should find the chicken and do a Santeria ritual. The writers asked if she knew, and she joked, “I dabble” — it ended up in a script.

And that’s not the only time the writers have asked for their input. Manning shares that the writers asked them what their talents were. And Schilling shared a story about her grandmother keeping a dead bird in a freezer, and it ended up in Red’s storyline in season 1.

“I felt weirded out about Gloria having to get so ugly with Sophia…I had to say things and go to a place that I fight on a daily basis to make sure my sister doesn’t receive,” Leyva says of Gloria and Sophia’s feud in season 3. (Leyva’s sister is a trans woman.)

5:12 PM: Schilling notes that “new things are emerging all the time” in Piper as the things she thought she had to be are stripped away.

5:15 PM: “The scope of it is so huge…that, really, a minor character can suddenly come into focus and have an entire chapter of their own,” Lyonne says of how binging culture has changed the way they act. “Knowing that’s the nature of the show…it means that little moments that might be an eighth of a page throwaway in a movie, it feels like big moments when you watch it in one sitting.”

5:16 PM: Who do the actresses want to work with? Aduba says she wants to work with “her girl” Dascha Polanco, since Suzanne and Dayanara haven’t interacted.

(Lyonne is pitching an episode in Hawaii, but she notes it won’t happen.)

Leyva says she’d like to see Gloria and Pennsatucky share screen time. She wants a little bit of everything, and jokes about it to the tune of “Mambo Number 5.”

5:19 PM: “I feel a great deal of solidarity with the cast of GAME OF THRONES,” Lyonne cracks when a reporter tries to get an answer from her about her involvement in season 4.

5:23 PM: “It was cold,” Leyva says of the final scene. The women agree it was freezing, though Aduba loved it.

“I cried throughout the entire lake scene,” Leyva says of watching that sequence.

“39 episodes of this tension building of people who haven’t been beyond the fence,” Aduba says. “To have that expression happen? The opportunity to see these women, to see who they are when they’re not in this world.”

DeLaria says she put up photos of the cast playing with Polanco’s fake on-screen breasts on Instagram, but the pictures were taken down.

“She almost drowned me,” DeLaria recalled of playing chicken with Manning in the lake. But, they laughed so hard about it all.

5:27 PM: “We’re showing the world it’s OK to have many different types of women” on TV, Leyva says. She feels the show is changing the TV landscape now. “There’s a lot of honesty in our portrayals and what we’re putting forth.”